


Lessons Learnt

by freedomsparks



Category: Skulduggery Pleasant - Derek Landy
Genre: Abusive Relationships, Gen, In between Mortal Coil and Death Bringer, Mental Instability, Mortal Coil spoilers, Prostitution, Sexual Harassment, Violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2013-06-25
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:16:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855105
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/freedomsparks/pseuds/freedomsparks
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"The hospital, Kenspeckle, it was her life for such a long time. To have that ripped out from underneath her was very disorientating. She needs to look about for a new place.  A new home."</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Lesson One: Nobody Needs Chins

**Author's Note:**

> "He thought I needed taking care of. I let him think that. I think he needed that."

Clarabelle has never been self-conscious. At least, not to a point of obsession or paranoia. She knows what she looks like and whether it is pleasing or not to other people doesn’t matter. It’s all hers and she does her best to look after it and to keep it out of trouble. It saddens her that not everybody understands this. People tend to believe that you must be concerned about your appearance if you are a young girl. Kenspeckle was one of these people. 

“I don’t have much of a chin, do I?” It was an observation more than anything. Though the spoon she was using as a mirror distorted her face somewhat, it was very clear that Clarabelle’s round face came to an abrupt stop almost directly under her lips. It was a bit on an anti-climax.

Dr Grouse was busy at the time. Filing something or writing something – something important and doctor-ly and involving paper. He wasn’t too busy to answer her, though, he seldom was. “Chins aren’t important.” His tone was gruff as usual. “They’re just there. Doing nothing. Nobody needs chins, really.” 

She knew that it wasn’t true. He’d have at least a paragraph stored in his mental hard drive, explaining the role of the human chin but she let him go on. 

“Why would you want a chin, anyway?” He continued. It sounded as if he was annoyed at her for being insecure. Although she knew he wasn’t. That’s just how things worked. He could be nice to Valkyrie because it was obvious when she was hurt and it was even more obvious that the skeleton wasn’t the best at comforting her but Clarabelle? She was soft spoken. She skipped everywhere. Being gentle with her was unnecessary; she was gentle enough for the both of them and Kenspeckle, for reasons unknown, did not want to appear gentle if it wasn’t needed. The man cared - he really did - he just didn’t want her to be too aware of it.

It was strange but Clarabelle was used to strange. So she responded in a way that would make him feel better. “I’m not sure. Everybody has quite lovely chins. I suppose I want look like everybody else.” 

“That’s ridiculous. Everybody looks no better than you.”

“Do you really think so?” 

“Of course.” He responded quickly, looking up at her this time. “I’m everybody else. Do you want to look like me?”  
It was then that she pretended to take him in like it was the first time she had ever seen him. “I wouldn’t like to have my hair be as messy as yours.” She concluded. 

“See? Everybody really isn’t that impressive. Shouldn’t you go on your rounds now? Shoo.” 

Bless him, he tried and she always let him think that he succeeded. The man had failed to save so many people; he needed a damsel in distress to pick up every so often. There were times - when he thought that no one could see him - that he looked so tired. It made Clarabelle’s heart ache. He needed her, she was certain of it from the moment she met him, but he was a healer right down to his core. Kenspeckle had a need to look after everyone; it exhausted him and made it difficult to get through to him. How do you mend a person that does nothing but mend other people?

Helping the helper by letting him help you. Clarabelle was proud of this strategy. Possibly the sharpest medical mind in the world didn’t manage to figure it out either. It was a nice little routine they had going on and Clarabelle was starting to see its affect. He was starting to socialise. Think about things other than his work. He even started dating. 

It was inevitable that it would go wrong. Everything goes wrong eventually. 

Kenspeckle died. She knows it wasn’t her fault; she’s capable of understanding how a remnant works, but she’s allowed to feel guilty. It was her hand that held the scalpel, after all. It’s her that has to deal with the knowledge of that. 

It’s the coincidence that she hates the most. If that thing hadn’t have possessed her at that particular time in that particular place, maybe he would still be alive. 

Frustration. That’s the feeling that goes hand in hand with his murder. Frustration at fate. Clarabelle has lost count of how many hours she has spent staring up at the stars, longing for her past self to have been somewhere else, for Valkyrie to have found her sooner. Frustration and longing are both inherently useless, however, and it does nothing to help her. 

Typical. That’s the thought she always goes back to. Just bloody typical that I mess everything up again.

She’s travelling at the moment. The hospital, Kenspeckle, it was her life for such a long time. To have that ripped out from underneath her was very disorientating. She needs to look about for a new place. As of now, she’s just stepped off of a ferry in London.

Unfortunately, it is just what she expected. A bit drizzly. Cold. It feels just like Dublin. 

Clarabelle, always an optimist, carries of regardless. She slings her travel bag over her shoulders and heads for…anywhere. As she walks, she thinks of snails. She feels a bit like a snail; her whole life is currently resting on her back and it’s slowing her down. No wonder they look so miserable. They’re their own home. She can safely say that it’s not fun at all. 

By the time the sky starts to darken, Clarabelle isn’t any closer to finding a place she can stay. She would stay the night in a homeless shelter but she’s anxious for the safety of her bag. There is money in her pocket, she still hasn’t spent all of her last paycheque and people kept dropping change into her lap though she can’t remember asking for any, but it’s not enough to book a night in a hotel.

There is one thing she could do. The thought occurred to her as she glared at a boy for staring at her legs on the train. She didn’t want to resort to it at the time. There was still a possibility that she’d have a roof over her head by the end of the night. Him staring at her like she was a piece of meat, it made her think of the women she saw in Dublin after dark. Easy money. A night in a hotel courtesy of someone else’s wallet.

Sitting in an almost empty Mcdonald’s, pretending to drink from an empty cup so the manager won’t throw her out; she catches the sight of herself in a window. She’s pretty. People would pay for her, wouldn’t they? She doesn’t have much in the way of a chin but who cares? Nobody needs chins after all.


	2. Lesson Two: Sometimes The Monsters Win

She doesn’t want to hate them. This is the first rule she sets herself. If she starts to hate them then she will have given up completely to the toxicity around her. That will not happen, she is sure of it. She’s Clarabelle, for God’s sake. Sweet little Clarabelle. If the world makes her hate, there will be no hope for humanity. 

Anyway, it turns out that they’re not that bad. There are some people she doesn’t dare go near. The other girls tell her who they are. There’s a certain silent companionship that threads them all together: it’s like having a group of older sisters that don’t actually care about you that much. She pays attention to how they stand. If somebody dodgy comes sniffing about, there’s an abrupt change in the atmosphere. Suddenly, it gets even colder. The girls turn away from them and she follows. She’s been tapped on the shoulder quite a few times by people she’s rather not look at – usually, she pretends that she’s lost. They get the picture and move onto another girl.

As the weeks go by, she starts to recognise people. They’re her regulars, she supposes. The Polish man with the large boots. The willowy woman with the dangerous addiction. The androgynous figure that never takes off their clothes but instead lies down on the bed with their head on her lap.

She notices pretty quickly that they all have something in common: they need taking care of. Maybe they could tell that she used to be a healer or maybe those in need of help subconsciously gravitate towards those that have no one to help.  
The woman pays her extra because she’s scared that Clarabelle will tell her husband about her visits, which covers the cost of food and other such necessities. During the day, she works as a waitress at the greasy spoon in the East End. It’s nice. The owner is an exhausted fifty-year-old with a son who refuses to go to school. He sits on a table by the window all day with his uniform on. Clarabelle smiles at him but he keeps scowling at her. She’s made it her own personal mission to get him to say hello to her. 

While washing her face over a sink in a freezing motel room, it suddenly occurs to her that she will never stop helping people. Throughout her life, unhappy people have come to her and she has adopted them. Is she just like Kenspeckle, constantly trying to make sure other people are OK? She shrugs the thought off and dries herself with a scratchy towel. 

Mostly, she lives off of junk food. It’s nice enough and – more importantly – it’s cheap. Everything is so expensive in London. Ridiculously expensive. After flopping onto the bed with enough force to make it creak, she reaches over to the bedside cabinet and grabs her half-eaten burger. One or two bites prove that she’s still not hungry, and she puts it back. There’s a battered copy of The Metro by her knee and she kicks it off of the bed. It keeps reminding her that she hasn’t started looking for apartments to rent. 

She knows why; it’s not laziness or fear of failure. She doesn’t want to leave them. The people that come to her, they need her. What will happen if they find out that she’s left them to live in a proper house, to work only during the day, to actually rest at night?

While pondering this, she touches her lips. Her androgynous sleeper kissed her goodbye tonight. They were nervous and clumsy and it hurt her face a little bit. She’s gotten used to people taking kisses from her but it surprised her and she thinks she might have pulled away a little. She hopes not. If they thought she didn’t want to kiss them, they may not come to her again. They’re her favourite. 

If she didn’t understand how Kenspeckle felt, she definitely does now. Looking after people is hard work. Sleep comes easily to her, but the monsters hiding behind her eyelids are always waiting. Now, she runs on caffeine tablets and energy drinks. It’s not good for her health and the crashes she experiences are terrible, but it’s better than facing her demons. She has plenty of time to do that later on in life. Her eyelids are drooping so she takes a quick swig of Red Bull. It’s times like these, with caffeine coursing through her veins and nothing else do to, that she wonders about the others. 

Has Valkyrie found a new doctor? And Whatshisname with the funny hair, has he improved his teleportation abilities? She thought about sending a letter, but to whom would she send it? She hasn’t got anybody’s address. 

There’s a knocking at the door. Clarabelle runs through who it could be. A maid. The manager. A generous pizza delivery boy that gives people free food. The police. The bogey man. Someone from Dublin that is here to take her back to Ireland. A customer that knows where to find her. 

It turns out to be the last one. 

He looks at his feet the whole time, waiting for her to invite him in. She has to smile when he tells her what he’d like, with a shaking voice. It reminds her of how she was at first. That seems like a lifetime ago. 

Clarabelle puts a gentle hand on his shoulder and sits him down on the bed. When he starts to take off his shoes, she stops him. “I’m going to need paying first, please.” Be polite. They like it when you’re polite. 

“Ah. Yeah. Of course.” His hands shake as he takes out his wallet. He puts £10 on the bedside cabinet and then starts taking his shoes off again. 

“Wait,” She stops him for the second time. “I need more.”

“That’s all I have.” 

“I’m sorry but I can’t live off of this.” She hates to say it, she really does. His brown eyes look up to her in such an apologetic way. They are very pretty brown eyes too. Like autumn leaves. Still, it doesn’t matter how cute he is: she needs more. 

He probably would have bolted by now if she wasn’t smiling so much. She has to smile. Smiling is all she has left of herself. Instead of running out of the room, he starts to cry. 

Staying put isn’t an option. Clarabelle goes to him, wraps an arm around his shoulder. “There we go. It’s OK. There’s a cash machine around the corner, do you want to get some money out while I wait here?” 

“I don’t have anything else.” He rests his forehead against hers and it’s a pleasant feeling. “Can I owe you?” 

“I’m sorry.” She’s still not moved her face away from his. She really should. “That’s out of the question. I don’t have anything else either.” 

She thinks that he’s about to nod to agreement when he pushes his face into hers.

It’s not like her goodbye kiss at all. It’s rough and brutal. He knows that she wants to leave and he presses a hand to the small of her back, keeping her in place. His lips open against her closed ones. Her heartbeat is loud in her ears. The room is suddenly far too warm. His free hand holds her hardly-there chin. It’s soaked with sweat. If she threw up on him, would he leave her alone? She thinks she’s about to throw up.

Throwing up would be messy, not to mention gross. Instead, she bites his bottom lip. Hard.

He recoils then, howling in pain. Clarabelle takes the opportunity to moves away from the bed and to the other side of the room. He stares at her in disbelief, covering his mouth with both hands. She wipes his spit from her mouth. When her hand comes away, she sees blood. 

A small stream of crimson runs through a crack in his fingers. How hard had she bitten him? Enough to scare him. Enough to seriously injure him? 

All instincts to take care of him are gone. What does she care if he’s hurt? He tries to get up, and she spits at him. Her saliva is pink. 

“Get out.” She picks up his discarded shoe and throws it at his head. He flinches. Good. “Get out and never come back here again.”

He leaves, but the wave of triumph she expects never comes. The floor meets the side of her face and she doesn’t get up for a very long time.

She lost. 

In that split second, she had hated him. It filled her head and ran through every nerve in her body. Hate hate hate. She wanted to hurt him like he was hurting her. And now? Well, she certainly isn’t making any excuses for him. It’s all his fault. He made her mean. 

For the second time tonight, she thinks of Valkyrie Cain. The girl had always got into fights, there was no debating that, but Clarabelle had watched her as she became more and more dangerous. She’s pretty sure that Valkyrie could kill a man by now and not feel anything at all. Will she end up feeling like that? So desensitised to violence? She really doesn’t want that.  
Sure, Clarabelle chucked him out, and she’s happy to know that he’ll think twice about forcing himself onto another girl, but he won. He turned her into the one thing she never wanted to be.

The dawn comes too slowly. Clarabelle wears her blue shift dress with a long woollen scarf and her favourite boots underneath a red overcoat. Her Polish man gave her a new pair of woollen tights last week, after he saw all the ladders in her old pair; they’re comfy and warm. She’s been wearing them a lot lately. Her travel bag is on her back again. Her dirty clothes are in a newly-acquired plastic bag. The clerk at the motel lobby doesn’t wave back to her as she leaves. She should by now: Clarabelle practically lives there, and sees her every day. Would it kill her to be nice?

The plastic bag swings by her side as she walks. Her step has its familiar spring to it; that must be a good sign, right? So far, she doesn’t have any overwhelming urges to kill people. 

There’s a laundrette a few streets away, but Clarabelle always takes the longer route. It takes her past a small shopping district filled with local businesses. She has an odd fascination with the people that set up their shops in the morning. From across the street, she sees a baker putting out a water bowl by the door for any passing dogs. Her stomach growls ferociously. Looks like she’s hungry again. 

He smiles at her when she enters the bakery. It makes her feel good and sweet again. Christ, she’s hungry. For breakfast, she has a whole baguette. It’s warm and soft and it helps her to feel whole.

To get to the laundrette, she needs to go through a back passage or two. She likes doing that – it’s a little exciting. A bit of morning giddiness is a marvellous way to spend the day. As she approaches, though, a woman explodes into view and pushes her out of the way. Clarabelle is knocked backwards onto the ground. The woman carries on running. 

That hair. Blonde. A wonderful shade of blonde. It’s familiar. 

“Tanith?” She calls out. Yeah, that’s Tanith. It’s got to be Tanith. Only she’d wear something that… sparse in weather like this. Only she’d strap a sword that large to her back and still be able to run at lightning speed.

Tanith turns, smiling in a way that knocks Clarabelle’s breath from her lungs, and not in a good way. There’s something not right. 

Oh. 

Black veins rise to the surface of her face, her pink lips darken too. Then she’s gone.

Tanith Low: certified good guy has been lost. They took her, and Clarabelle guesses that it’s too late to get her back. Clarabelle had watched the news while she was booking her ticket to England; Ireland had recovered completely after its ‘rage virus’. The Remnants lost, she knows that, but they stole Tanith and Kenspeckle.

She gets up and dusts herself off. The spring in her step is gone when she starts to walk again. The monsters lost but they took something too. God help them, she thinks, it can’t be easy having her on the other side. Usually, she sings to herself in the morning. Today, she’s silent. 

The baguette is finished off while she sits cross legged on the floor of the laundrette, watching her clothes go round and round in the washing machine. She’s friendly with the owner and he brings her a cup of tea. By the time she starts the tumble dryer, she’s come to the conclusion that London is poisonous to her. Her plan is formulated before her clothes have time to dry.

Clarabelle knows where her addict lives. She always knew. She followed her home once because she was afraid that her husband might be abusive. From what she heard sitting beneath the window, he was lovely. That made her feel guilty whenever his wife knocked on her door. Clarabelle uses past tense when recalling her visits, because she knows that sort of business is over now. At first she was reluctant to leave them, but after her late-night attack she knows that it is necessary. 

Their door is bright blue, the paint fresh and shiny. It’s the sort of house that happy TV families live in. A part of her wants to burst through into the living room and fall asleep by the fireplace. Her knock is louder than she thought it would be. Her addict opens the door. 

“I won’t tell him.” Clarabelle says before she can slam the door on her. “I just need to ask a favour.”

She leaves with enough money to go anywhere in the world. “It’s not blackmail,” she repeats under her breath as she books her ticket. “It’s just a favour. I’ve done loads for her. It’s just payback.”

It doesn’t feel like payback, though. It feels like she’s using the person that came to her for support. She might be leaving London but she’s still carrying a bit of its evil inside of her.


End file.
